BJ Crawford

Sorry I've been rather late in updating this blog, but I've been keeping rather busy with teaching and freelancing. I'll be posting up some new drawings later this week, but in the meantime I'd like you to take a look at the following clip of animation that I accidentally ran across while looking for something else on YouTube. It's by a fellow named BJ Crawford, whom I had the pleasure of teaching in his first year of animation at Sheridan College way back in 1997. (Actually, that was also my first year teaching there too!) I recall that BJ was one of the more natural cartoonists that year and that his Character Design assignments were always fun to look at. It was therefore a real treat to happen upon both this clip and his sample reel to see just what great stuff he's been doing in the 10 years since I last saw him. As I've often harped on about my dissatisfaction with most modern day animation being of the flat, Flash cutout variety, it is indeed refreshing to see a young guy doing some full character animation with personality in the movement:



And, though it's certainly made the rounds on many sites before this, I'll also add this bit of animation by the great James Baxter for more visual pleasure. This is a short cycled piece of a self-caricature that James did of himself dancing that shows the pure magic of the animated drawing at its finest. No fancy backgrounds, no digital paint job, just what appears to be nothing more than coloured pencils on sheets of animation paper. It is examples like these of both James Baxter and BJ Crawford that sum up what animation should be. I personally never tire of a hand-drawn cartoon character seemingly having that "Illusion of Life". Enjoy!